Survivor: Elizabeth Smart has published a book about her nine-month abduction ordeal and gives frequent lectures on her story (seen here on October 8)

Elizabeth Smart has spoken out about the three women who were kidnapped and held captive in a Cleveland home for a decade, saying she admires their strength.

'I'm always more than happy to speak to survivors... (but) I know how precious privacy is,' she said at an event in Bowling Green State University.

'I admire them so much. They are so strong.'

Smart's latest public speech came at an event in northwest Ohio on Tuesday at Bowling Green State University.

When asked about her marriage to Matthew Gilmour, The Courier reports that she told the crowd: 'It's great. I'm good, I'm happy.'

She spoke about how she survived nine months of captivity after being abducted in Utah when she was just 14.

The three young women who were found in Ariel Castro's Cleveland home were just a few years older than Smart was when she was abducted.

The difference between the two cases was the length at which they were held as Michelle Knight was held for 11 years, Amanda Berry for 10 and Gina DeJesus for nine.

The young women have followed Smart's lead but at a quicker pace. The Mormon harpist from Utah took more than a decade to release a book, shunning the media for years as she and her family tried to get back to their normal way of life before speaking about the ordeal.

Michelle Knight has already given a sit-down interview to Dr Phil that will be aired in the coming days.

Berry and DeJesus have made a deal with a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist to write a book about their experience.

Last month, Smart released a book about her kidnapping and has been speaking in great detail about the harrowing experience and her handful of close-call rescues.

Working together: Amanda Berry (left) and Gina DeJesus (right) have paired up with an award-winning journalist to help them pen a book about their time in Ariel Castro's captivity

During an hour-long interview with Meredith Vieira that aired last month, Smart returned to the remote spot where she had been chained up between trees and raped every day as a teenager.

She told of how in spite of the fear and confusion she felt immediately after captor Brian David Mitchell took her from her home in the middle of the night, she used information she knew about other kidnappings in the vain hope of trying have her parents get closure.

As they trekked up a remote path in the woods, she tried rationalizing with Mitchell: 'If you're going to rape and kill me, will you please just do it here so that my parents can find my body?'

'He just smiled at me and said "I'm not going to kill you yet,"' she told Vieira.

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When they stopped their trek, they arrived at a campsite where his accomplice- his wife, Wanda Barzee- was waiting. She began performing a makeshift wedding ceremony and Elizabeth said that she stopped crying and began to understand what was going on towards the end.

'I was begging and crying and just so scared,’ she told Vieira. 'I knew what happened after a wedding.

Again, she tried to argue her way out of trouble: 'Wait I didn't say I do. I didn't say yes. I'm just a little girl, you know I'm so little I haven't even hit puberty yet,' Smart recalls saying at the time.

'He raped me right there on the floor of the tent and then when he was finished I was left alone feeling absolutely broken absolutely shattered. I was broken beyond repair,' she said.

'Everytime I thought "OK this cannot get worse," it always did.'

'There was a point that I stopped crying,' she revealed. 'It’s not just
because I didn’t feel pain any more, not because I didn’t feel sorrow.
It was just to keep going. I mean, it just was to survive, to live.'

'Sleep was like my oasis- the place I could go to. If I could’ve slept for nine months, I would have.

Moving on: Smart's book comes nearly a decade after her kidnapping

Behind bars: Smart testified to the competency of her captor, Brian David Mitchell (left) and he was sentenced to life in prison while his wife Wanda Ileen Barzee (right) will spend 15 years behind bars

Unimaginable: Smart said how she was repeatedly raped and tied to a tree, being treated as less than human

Perspective: Smart says that revisiting the site doesn't bother her because it wasn't the area that caused her harm, it was her captors who are now behind bars

Smart, who is promoting the book that
she wrote about her ordeal, told Vieira about the numerous close calls
she had to being rescued over the course of her nine months of
captivity.

One came
when she heard her uncle's voice calling out her name as he participated
in one of the many search parties who explored the woods looking for
the kidnapped girl.

Like
so many other instances, Smart wanted to scream out but faced a very
real threat from Mitchell: 'If they ever get into this camp, I will kill
them,' he said.

The trio moved to California briefly before heading back to Utah where they stopped in a local Walmart. It was there that
she saw a wall of missing persons posters but did not see her own,
making her think 'did they forget me? Did they give up on me?'

They
hadn't: someone in the store called police and said that she thought
she saw the man whose picture she had seen on the news in connection to
the Elizabeth Smart disappearance.

New beginnings: Smart married fellow Mormon Matthew Gilmour and he had never heard of her case until she told him all of the details herself

Happy now: Smart had her husband Matthew Gilmour alongside her for portions of the interview with Vieira

The
officer asked Elizabeth who she was when he arrived at the store, but,
like the time in the library, she was too afraid to answer.

'I was scared- what if the policeman didn't believe me? What if they released me back to Mitchell and Barzee?' she said.

Rather
than leave, however, the officer took all three into the police station
and it was only when Smart's father Ed came into the interrogation room
with Elizabeth did she know that everything was going to be alright.

'I
was so happy when I saw him and he came running over and grabbed me in
his arms. I knew that nobody would be able to hurt me ever again,' she
said.